I CAN HAS GORETUSK BURGER?

****

No you cannot has goretusk burger.

(hee)

 

 

WoW non-combat pets FTW

Well, as this is the white kitten blog . . . I felt compelled to post about WarcraftPets.com, which was recently acknowledged by Bliz on the WoW website.

After a quick perusal, it looks pretty nice. The styling is simple and clean, and there’s even a little gnomegirl head with a quote bubble to comment about the merits of each pet.

The home page of the site is styled like the home page of Thottbot. You can search for a pet or click on a topical link to browse.

If you correctly type in the name of a pet (sorry, no googlistic “did you mean misTER wiggles?” here), you will be directed to that pet’s profile page.

There you will learn about him or her. For example, Mr. Wiggles’ profile is:

Favored Faction:	Neutral
Description:	Pink pot-bellied piglet.
Idle Animation:	Grazes on weeds and wiggles rear.
Mobility:	Runs/walks
Sound:	None
Source:	QUEST: [10]A Warden of the Alliance/Horde
Vendor buys for:	n/a — vendors will not buy
Auction Price:	n/a — item cannot be auctioned
Event Required:	Children’s Week (May 9-16)
Rarity:	U

In the case of Mr. Wiggles, the pet is acquired through completion of a quest. Other pets, such as the tiny crimson whelpling, can only be obtained by chance or by grinding.

The pet profiles on WarcraftPets.com will tell you which mobs drop the pet, and very generally where those mobs are located.

Breanni, the purported gnomegirl webmaster of the site, offers the following advice for anyone interested in grinding for these pets:

Multitask – Because you’re killing the same mobs over and over, you’ll quickly become accustomed to a routine. After a while, your routine becomes almost robotic, enabling you to multitask with ease. It’s not uncommon to farm while watching TV, listening to music, or chatting with your guild.

If I’d followed Breanni’s advice for several days, perhaps throwing a little NoDose into the mix, maybe I’d have a whelpling of my own. And a feeling of comradery with several pug members I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in instance.

I got my first real five string

Me and some guys from the guild,

we had a band and we tried real hard.

Dengo quit;

Tistann got married.

I should have known

we’d never get far . . .

In WoW one cannot learn to play an instrument, but in Lotro one can.  My lore-master has taken up the lute, which is very cool.  (Although her only other option was clarinet, which is decidedly uncool, so she didn’t have too many options.)  My minstrel, not surprisingly, has a much broader variety of instruments available to her, including **harp** (yeah!) – but she’s still too destitute to afford one, so we’ll have to revisit that later.

Once you have your instrument, you can play it using the numbers on your keyboard, which apparently correspond to notes on the diatonic scale. 

1  2 3 4 5 6 7 8

C D E F G A B C

So, for example, the first verse of Camptown Races obviously would be played as 5 5 3 5 6 5 3 , 3 2 3 2.  (Note: be sure to enter /music first and have your lute equipped as, if I remember correctly, a ranged weapon, before you attempt this.)

One thing you may notice about playing an instrument on Lotro, or at least playing the lute (we’ll see whether it applies to other instruments as well), is that you instantly become a rock star as soon as you begin playing, even if you’re just tapping randomly on the keyboard.  Toons will immediately gather around you and dance, clap, and otherwise indicate how wonderful you are.  It’s pretty entertaining, and if anyone gets scary you can just log out for a while.